Chapter 7. Hollyweird! (pt. 2)

We ran into Norm at the free clinic on Fairfax. He found the house he’d been talking about before. It was on the east-side of the freeway. The Taft House had been one of the early communal family houses in Hollywood. It was owned by an older gay couple whose idea was to have a sort of tribal place where people could live together in an experimental communal fashion. It was a nice old Victorian home though the sitting room was half filled with a large canopied bed where people tripped. The dining room had a long table that easily seated a dozen people. The kitchen was small but comfortable and all the cupboards were sloppily painted by trippers with even sloppier psychedelic themes such as rainbows and unicorns.

Miriam I were offered a bedroom upstairs, shared with another couple, which had its own bath. It seemed too good to be true to be inside, with running water and all, in a bed big enough for two couples and two cots on the side.

First thing Miriam did was to run the bath water and get in the tub. The couple, Sarah and Felix, came in the bathroom and sat around her. Miriam didn’t like being watched as she bathed but let herself be appraised regardless as Sarah noted, “You have a cute body.”

“Thanks…” Miriam answered almost shyly.

I was curious… what were these two up to?

Felix added, “Your breasts are small but perfect.”

Miriam opened her mouth like she was in a dentist chair, “You wanna see my teeth too.”

They laughed. I didn’t and was going to say something about wanting some privacy when Felix asked, “… have you two ever thought about posing.”

“Posing for what?” I asked.

Sarah picked up where Felix left off, “Skin magazines.”

I knew where it was going but played dumb and looked at her incredulously, “What?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. It’s magazines... nudies… X rated, you see?”

Miriam was curious… enthused, “How much?”

Sarah continued, “Thirty bucks an hour for women and ten bucks for men.”

Back then X-rated meant what soft-core porn is now. I was interested but had some concerns, “What about a hard-on?”

Felix laughed, “You don’t have to worry about that. As long as there is no penetration it is legal to have a semi-hard-on.”

“How about my physique? I’m no Adonis.”

Sarah laughed, “It doesn’t matter. These jerk-off rags don’t want an Adonis… except for the gay ones.”

“Yah,” Felix added, “but you look good enough for that.”

“How long can it last,” Miriam asked, “I mean how many times can I be in a magazine without being seen over and over?”

“Oh, you just wear wigs and change it up,” Sarah assured her, “I’ve been doing it for over a year now and I still get two or three calls a week.”

So, that was how Miriam got introduced to the soft-core porn industry, I opted not to do it. It wasn’t so much that I had moral scruples but I didn’t like the idea of posing up-close and nude without getting a hard-on. It didn’t seem natural to me. I decided to take whatever job I could find and leave the porn business alone.

While I was taking an evening walk on Sunset, a nice looking black girl handed a pamphlet to me promising another free dinner.

“This ain’t like that Tony and Sue deal, is it?” I pled.

She chuckled, “No, have you ever heard of Nicheren Buddhism?”

“No, I mean, I’ve heard some about Buddhism but what is this?”

“We meet and have a service where we just chant. No preaching.”

“Oh, I get it. I had a friend in the Navy who was into chanting something like Nam-yo-ho-renge-kyo.”

“Yes, that’s it. You’re welcome to join us for fellowship and dinner.”

She was an attractive girl… reminded me of Glenda and I was intrigued anyway because of the brief discussions I’d had with Dan and Linda back at Altamont. I showed up hoping I’d meet with the black girl but the chanting had already begun. I was handed a printout of the chant so I went along with it. I didn’t know what the words meant but it didn’t seem to matter. The power of the whole group chanting was amazing to me and I found myself, not only enjoying it but, sensing a deeper reality going on. After the chanting, it got what I considered somewhat silly as individuals stood to “testify” about what chanting had done for them. There was no talk about inner-peace, clarity of mind, union with whatever, or any of what Dan and Linda spoke of. One by one, young starlets and used-car dealers, stood to tell about how they got an audition for a role in a movie or sold a high-end auto after chanting for it only a few days or weeks. They did serve a dinner too. It was spaghetti with soy meatballs.

Back at the house Sarah, Felix, Miriam and I, slept together in the big bed for about a week. There was very little fooling around considering we were all in the same bed because all of us had been busy working to make ends meet and were too tired. One night, still half asleep, I felt Sarah reaching over my waist from behind. I came full awake when I heard Miriam sternly insist, “Felix! Get your hand off my tits!”

Felix moaned, “Okay… I’m cool… it’s okay.”

“No. It’s not okay!”

I was ready to have some fun but I ceded my libido to Mariam’s discomfort. I think I might have loved her that much.

The next day Miriam didn’t show up for one of her shoots and didn’t come back to the house until the afternoon after that. Norm and I had taken a job at a carwash on La Brea and thought nothing of her absence until after we got home from work. She came in the door, head hanging, with a gnarly-bearded-tall-longhaired-hippy dude.

“We have to talk,” she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the kitchen.

“Talk about what?” I felt a stabbing pain in my gut, “You with that guy?”

“I can’t hang here…” She started to explain.

“Are you with that guy?” I drilled her.

About then That Guy came into the kitchen.

“It’s not what you think, Max?” She began to explain.

The guy chided. “You gotta let go, man…”

“Don’t fuckin’ give me that guru-jive. Let go of what?” I glared upward at the lanky hippy towering above me and challenged, “What’s it to you if I don’t!”

“We just talked…” the voice of a guilty little girl was so unlike Miriam’s.

“All night?” I was still glaring at the giant in front of me.

“Um… yes.” She offered hesitantly.

“Oh, I see.” I turned and walked out into the rain that was lightly coming down.

I felt like going somewhere… anywhere but … I thought of Santa Barbara and how much I’d liked it there. I might head there.

I’d gotten as far on the Pacific Coast Highway as Topanga Canyon Blvd. before it started to get dark and the clouds thickened to let loose with a torrential downpour. I had been standing there with my thumb out for over an hour when a man in full rain-gear walking past me stopped.

He pointed out the direction from where he’d come, “You want to get out of the rain… I have a place down over on the other side of the creek.”

I was so enjoying the Bluesieness of standing in the rain in my sorrow that I automatically responded with, “No thanks, I’m okay with the rain.”

The Rain Gear man walked to the corner of Topanga to a store and when he came back it was dumping twice as hard.

“Really, it’s okay. I’m not queer.” He stopped and gestured once more in the direction past the creek. “My wife and kid are all warm, dry and cozy, with hot soup on the stove… You’re welcome to it.” He gave me directions, described the house and slogged on in the rain towards his home.

I stood there for another hour as the rain just kept coming. It was completely dark by this time. I stopped thinking for a minute about Miriam and the cold damp place I was standing in.

I walked up to the door and knocked. One of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen opened the door. She stood there angelically with her long ringlets of golden brown hair in a full length plain cotton dress. It was a small one-room cabin with an open loft built above for a bedroom. I put on a robe offered in place of the soaking clothes that I’d been invited to hang high above a pot-bellied wood-burning stove along with my drenched coat. The daughter was a precocious girl of about four or five who immediately wanted to sit on my lap as soon as I sat down.

A pipe was passed and I was soon after handed a bowl of soup thick enough to be a stew. The rain pounded down above it all as the evening progressed with the soft conversation, the warmth of the stove, the soothing stew of a soup, and homemade bread.

 “Where are you going?” asked the wife.

“I was thinking of Santa Barbara.”

“Are you from there?” Hubby busied himself with his bowl of soup but turned to show a gentle face as he queried.

The girl chimed in, “Santa Barbara! They have a Zoo!”

“No, I’m not from there. I just want to check it out.”

“We went to the Zoo and daddy let me pet some goats.”

“Honey, let Max eat his soup.”

“Oh, I don’t mind… really.” It was so warm and kind and nice in that room I felt as though I’d died and gone to heaven.

“What made you want to leave where you were?”

“Uh, Hollywood?”

“Yeah, if that’s where you were coming from?”

So, it went like that and we talked past the time the girl fell asleep on my lap. We talked and talked about Altamont, Miriam, broken hearts, sorrow, crushed dreams, the military, the Navy, and hope and more smoke… lots of hope for the future, and hope for the little girl. I would see some very dark days in the future but I could always point to this interlude on a rainy night in a cabin at the side of PCH with a bowl of warm soup…

I thought, if there ever was one, God surely lives in these moments.